[61-62] Bergson, who perhaps more than all others has contributed to the dissemination of these ideas in philosophical literature, would not have accepted without reservation the expression "artificial trick." In his view, science is something greater and higher than merely a trick in relation to matter. But matter for him is not true reality; it is a defective, regressive, and dead reality. In relation to true reality, however—living, spiritual, and creative—mathematics and science in general can have no character other than artificial and symbolic. In any case, it remains valid that an effect on matter, rather than knowledge of its essence, was the purpose for which mathematics was created by the intellect, that first instrument forged under the pressure of practical needs in the face of matter...

Is it not mathematics more than all other sciences that inclines certain minds in our day toward pragmatism, toward that sophistry of pragmatism which is scientific agnosticism? Indeed, it is precisely in mathematics that we feel ourselves most distant from the concrete and real, most close to an arbitrary play with formulas and symbols, so abstract that it seems empty...